I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the STEPPING OFF by Jordan
Sonnenblick Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Jordan Sonnenblick
Pub. Date: June 4, 2024
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook
Pages: 336
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/STEPPING-OFF
Jesse Dienstag's favorite sweatshirt
says, "The real world isn't real." That's the slogan of the
vacation-home community in Pennsylvania where his family has always spent every
vacation and weekend for as long as he can remember. In the summer of 2019, as
Jesse is about to enter his junior year of high school in New York City, he
desperately wants to believe the slogan is true. For one thing, the two girls
he loves -- equally and desperately -- are in Pennsylvania, and all the
stresses and pressures of his daily life and school are in New York.
But when his parents stop talking to
each other, it gets harder and harder for Jesse to maintain his dream life in
Pennsylvania. And when Covid shuts New York City down in March 2020 just days
after Jesse’s mother leaves his father, Jesse's worlds collide.
Excerpt:
There’s a picture of me
pinned to the corkboard over my desk at my dad’s house. It’s a couple of
years old. I took it myself with a timer. In it, I have my beloved Fender
Precision electric bass guitar strapped around my neck. I’m wearing
a lake-blue hoodie with block letters on it, but you can only see
the tops of a couple of words over the instrument.
Anybody who looked at the
photo without knowing me would just see a pale, freckly, scrawny teenage
boy with shaggy brown hair, a slightly-too-big nose, and hazel
eyes. They would guess he probably plays the bass and likes hoodies.
They wouldn’t be wrong about
any of that. But there is just so much they wouldn’t see. They wouldn’t
know how nervous and insecure that kid is. They wouldn’t know he
was taking the photo to send to a girl, or that he was trying desperately to
impress her, like See? I’m cool! I’m a bass player! They wouldn’t
even know he had bought that bass used online, specifically because it
was finished in a rare shade called “Charcoal Frost” that reminded him of
the color of the girl’s eyes.
The girl wouldn’t know that
part, either.
The back of the hoodie said:
The real world isn’t real! That was the official motto of Tall Pines
Landing, the Pennsylvania vacation-home community where I’d spent
all my summers and weekends since I was a little kid. I loved that
hoodie for the same reason I loved the place itself. My “real world” was
Staten Island, New York. It was crowds and traffic, pollution and endless
noise. It was commuting to my incredibly high-pressure math-and-science
magnet high school in Manhattan five days a week by bus, ferry, and
subway. It was feeling alone and afraid in a vast, rolling sea of people.
It was watching my parents growing further and further apart every
year.
I spent the first sixteen
and a half years of my life trying as hard as I could to escape to the
mountains of Pennsylvania. Every chance I got, I went there
physically, and when I couldn’t actually be there in body, I would close
my eyes, put on some music, play my bass, and be there in spirit.
I needed to believe that the
real world wasn’t real.
1. The Pause Button
Have you ever wished that
life came with a pause button? I’ve wished it over and over again, and I know
exactly when I would freeze everything: late in the afternoon on
Saturday, May 18, 2019.
It was hot. Sunny. I was
standing in bright orange swimming shorts and my favorite old black Converse
All Stars on top of the concrete vehicle barrier that ran along the
edge of the Ledgedale Bridge, looking down at the dark, shadowed waters
of the lake forty feet below, trying to work up the nerve to jump.
When you jump off the
Ledgedale Bridge, the sneakers are necessary so you don’t break your feet. I
was between two girls, halfway in love with both of them at the same
time. Chloe Conti was holding my right hand loosely, her thin fingers dry
against mine. Ava Green was squeezing my left hand in a death grip, her
round fingers slick with sunscreen. “Don’t let go of me,” Ava hissed. The
sun was coming through the chain-link fence over her shoulder, and it was
so bright that I couldn’t really make out her features. She was just a
flash of white teeth and a golden halo of long hair above a
bubble-gum-pink swimsuit and the smooth skin of a hip against my
leg.
“Never,” I said.
We were all leaning back
against the fence. The links were burning into my back. I closed my eyes
and tried to breathe slowly, in through my nose, out through my
mouth—just like my asthma doctor always said to do when I was feeling
panicky about my breathing. Or, you know, about jumping off something
really high and drowning. As soon as I inhaled, the coconut scent of
Chloe’s lotion and the flowery smell that always came off Ava’s
hair almost overwhelmed me.
Chloe squeezed my hand with
that birdlike gentleness, and I turned to her. She was staring right at
me, which did not make me less lightheaded. I could see the soft,
haunting gray around her pupils. I looked down, because sometimes making
eye contact with Chloe was too much for me to handle, even when we
weren’t balanced on an alarmingly narrow ledge.
That was the thing about
being with Chloe and Ava that summer: I’d never been so happy, so
nervous, so uncomfortable, so miserable, and so thrilled before—all
at the same time. Being with them was hot sauce and honey on my
tongue.
My calves were starting to
get shaky, so I knew we couldn’t just stand there much longer. Plus, the
police might come. But I didn’t quite have the guts or the leadership
or whatever it would require to get us to take that one big step
forward. It was Chloe who finally said, “So, guys, are we doing this or
what?”
Well, I sure wasn’t going to
look like a chicken in front of my two best friends. Who were also my two
crushes. “Oh, we’re doing it,” I said. “If the birthday girl is
ready?”
For some reason, it was a
Tall Pines Landing tradition—a highly illegal tradition—to climb out onto
the middle of the Ledgedale Bridge and jump into the water as a sixteenth
birthday rite of passage. I was already sixteen, and so was Chloe. Our
birthdays were in the winter, but it was Ava’s actual birthday weekend,
so this was officially the birthday jump for all of us. We had come up with the
idea of a triple jump years ago, probably when we were around eleven,
lying on the ratty old mattresses on the floor of Ava’s treehouse.
We’d had five years to think about this moment, but it hadn’t totally sunk
into my head how scary it would be until now. Ava’s grip, which had already
been bone-crushing, cranked up another notch. I was pretty sure I felt a
knuckle in my pinkie crack. “I’m ready,” she said. “Kinda.” “So, do we
just, like, count down?” I asked.
“I guess so,” Ava replied.
“But from a high number, okay?” “Are we talking five? Ten? Twenty?” I felt my
voice crack on that last syllable, which I was pretty sure hadn’t
happened since I was thirteen.
“No,” Chloe said, “We count
down from three, like this: Three . . . two . . . one . . . go!”
My knees bent, and I almost
involuntarily started to spring forward. Chloe and Ava both yanked me
back against the fence, hard.
“That was just a practice
countdown, Superman,” Chloe said.
“I knew that,” I replied
weakly.
Chloe let go of my hand for
a second, put the back of her hand against my chest, and gently pushed me
against the fence. “Just breathe for a second, okay?” she said. Then
she shouted, “Hey, Jake, are there any boats coming?” Oh, that’s right,
I realized. My older sister and her boyfriend were down on the rocks on
one side below. Nobody ever jumped off this bridge without an
audience, because if you didn’t have spotters, you might just land
on the deck of somebody’s sailboat.
“You’re good!” Jake yelled.
“By the way, I’m totally filming this, so try to make it cinematic,
okay?” Perfect, I thought.
Chloe took my hand again.
“All right, kids. Remember what everyone always says: Bend both knees.
Jump off with both feet at once. Don’t tense up. Keep your body
straight up and down in the air. Legs together. Let go of each other when
we hit the water so everybody’s hands are free for swimming. Then swim
straight up toward the light. Got it?”
I wanted to throw up. I
wanted to cry. I wanted to forget this whole thing.
“You’re still clear!” Jake
shouted.
Ugh, I
thought. It’s gonna be a long summer if we don’t go through with
this.
“You good, Ava?” I asked.
Ava relaxed her death grip for an instant, only to clamp down even
harder. “Never better,” she gritted out through clenched teeth.
“Count it, Chloe,” I
said.
I forced myself to look
straight ahead into the air as Chloe, the girl of half my dreams, said,
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . GO!”
I felt Chloe’s and Ava’s
hands drop down and swing back a bit, then forward. My knees almost
buckled, but they held as I swung my arms with theirs and took the
leap.
For that one perfect second, maybe a second and a half, we were flying.
About Jordan Sonnenblick:
Jordan
Sonnenblick is the author of the acclaimed Drums, Girls & Dangerous
Pie, After Ever After, Notes from the Midnight Driver, Zen
and the Art of Faking It, Falling Over Sideways, and The Secret Sheriff of
Sixth Grade. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two
children.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
1 winner
will receive a finished copy of STEPPING OFF, US Only.
Ends July 16th, midnight EST.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
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6/17/2024 |
IG Post |
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6/18/2024 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/19/2024 |
Interview/IG Post |
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6/20/2024 |
IG Post |
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6/21/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/22/2024 |
IG Review |
Week Two:
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6/23/2024 |
Review/IG Post/TikTok Post |
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6/24/2024 |
IG Review |
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6/25/2024 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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6/26/2024 |
IG Review |
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6/27/2024 |
Review |
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6/28/2024 |
IG Review/TikTok Post |
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6/29/2024 |
Review |
Week Three:
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6/30/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/1/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/2/2024 |
IG Review |
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7/3/2024 |
IG Review/LFL Drop Pic/TikTok Post |
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7/4/2024 |
IG Review |
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7/5/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/6/2024 |
IG Review |
Week Four:
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7/7/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/8/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/9/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/10/2024 |
Review |
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7/11/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/12/2024 |
Review/IG Post |
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